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PHYTOTOXIC STUDIES OF MEDICINAL PLANT SPECIES OF PAKISTAN

SYED ABDULLAH GILANI^12*, YOSHIHARU FUJII³, ZABTA KHAN SHINWARI⁴, MUHAMMAD ADNAN¹, AKIRA KIKUCHI² AND KAZUO N. WATANABE²

Abstract: Allelopathic screening of 81 medicinal plant species, collected from North West Frontier Province (NWFP) Pakistan, was carried out to identify significantly higher allelopathic species for future phytochemical analyses. For this purpose, sandwich method was used to test allelopathic potentials of leaf leachates of these plant species against lettuce seeds (Lactuca sativa L.). Two different concentrations of 10 mg and 50 mg of leaf leachates were used in the study. The radicle and hypocotyl growths were measured and compared with control treatments. It was observed that an endemic species Seriphidium kurramense, Andrachne cordifolia and Rhazya stricta were the stronger phytotoxic plants as compared to the other test species.

Based on the current screening, three potential medicinal plants are recommended for future bioassay guided isolation of allelochemicals and for genetic diversity studies. It would also be interesting to see correlation between genetic markers and isolated allelochemicals.  

¹Department of Botany, Kohat University of Science and Technology (KUST), Kohat, Pakistan,

²Gene Research Center, Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, 1-1-1 Tennoudai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8572, Japan,

³Biodiversity Division, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES), 3-1-3 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8604, Japan,

⁴Department of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.